David: Okay, everyone. By popular demand, we're doing an all Epstein show today. My besties are all on vacation for ski week, so I'm taking this on solo. We have three different guests on who all have very different interpretations and opinions of the Epstein story. Sagar Enjeti from Breaking Points believes that the Epstein shows that there is a quote unquote Epstein class that operates above law and accountability. He views the story as an indictment of our ruling elites. Michael Tracey is skeptical about many of the most salicious claims about Epstein and questions whether they meet any kind of evidentiary standard. He has criticized the media feeding frenzy over what he has called Epstein mythology. And finally, Kevin Bass, a citizen journalist who's been tracking the release files and posting his findings on X, specifically in regards to Reed Hoffman, perhaps the figure in tech most closely associated with Jeffrey Epstein. Some of it gets heated, but hopefully you'll come away with new perspectives and great information. I felt like it was important to showcase a range of viewpoints on this issue. I'm trying to keep an open mind and I'll describe my own point of view at the end of the show. And with that, here we go. Sager, let me start with you. What is the import of the arrest of Prince Andrew in the UK this morning? I mean, is this a case of show us the man and we'll tell you the crime? I mean, it obviously it seems kind of coincidental that he's not being arrested for misconduct in the Epstein affair. He's being arrested on mishandling, I guess, trade secrets or public documents. So, obviously, the timing of this is not coincidental.

Saagar: No, it's certainly not coincidental, but I do believe that the facts do matter in this case. And unfortunately, you know, for Prince Andrew, for Lord Mandelson, the former ambassador to the United States from the UK as well, it is pretty clear-cut that they did violate their official duties. We should remember that the crux of this case involving Andrew is not just about some of the accusations that were made, although that is the genesis, let's say, of the investigation and of the interest. This is about Prince Andrew serving as a UK trade adviser and forwarding non-public information to Jeffrey Epstein has been released that's currently in the file. Some of it is involving scheduling. However, Gordon Brown this morning said that he had actually shared some new information with Scotland Yard in the police. So, none, it's not exactly just what's in the file, but it could potentially be other material that Gordon Brown and the chancellory were able to investigate as to what Prince Andrew was sharing as part of a broader probe into Lord Mandelson and the tip off that he gave to Jeffrey Epstein about an upcoming bailout. And I do think that this does reveal quite a lot about Jeffrey Epstein. The next is the genesis of his rise to power, his wealth, and his influence. something that involved let's say even some of the co-hosts let's say on this very podcast which is a deep financial knowledge of moneyaundering networks of trying to be at the very forefront of moving money across the globe which I believe is his real power and his influence which is what enabled much of the behavior that much of the public is now horrified by.

David: okay wait I I can't let that just go by what do you mean by involving co-host of this podcast?

Saagar: I'm talking about Jason. I actually thought that the Jason email was Very interesting. So you'll see that in 2011 that Jeffrey Epstein is contacting Jason about Bitcoin. This is by I saw I watched your discussion. I'm not implicating him in any crime. I'm saying if you watch and look at that email very closely, you are watching Jeffrey Epstein, a master money launderer and financial mastermind himself, be at the forefront of the Bitcoin technology and wondering about it in 2011, which as Jason even pointed out in the last episode that you guys did about this when Bitcoin was some $1 and some sort of open-source project. Like to me that shows how at the forefront he was of new technology and new ways to move money surreptitiously across the globe, which is what I believe was his real strength and his basically um his his uh raise on detra for being so useful to all of these different foreign governments and intelligence assets including ours, Russia, Israel, various different Israeli or various different intelligence networks across the globe.

David: Yeah, let me just for for viewers of this episode who didn't see that episode, let me just summarize what exactly happened there because I want to just make sure that Jason's reputation is not unfairly impuged. And I don't think you're doing that, but just to be absolutely clear about it, what happened was that Jason hosted an episode of This Week in Startups roughly, I think in 2011, with a couple of the Bitcoin core founders and then Epstein reached out to him for an introduction to those people. I thought and and one of my takeaways from that was like you said Sagar that Epste was extraordinarily early to Bitcoin. He clearly had a nose for putting himself in the middle of things. I think 2011 is when I discovered Bitcoin. So that was relatively early. I thought it was almost comical the way that Jason was trying to warn Epstein, oh, you don't want to meet these guys. These are some these are some crazies. They're like these crypto libertarians. They want to take down the government. There's no profit. Um there's no investment opportunity here. In a way, it was kind of comical that Jason was trying to warn Epstein about the Bitcoin guys rather than vice versa. But I don't really think people knew at that point in time what Epstein was involved in. Do you disagree with that? Do you think people should have known by 2011?

Saagar: Well, David, I mean, I will say there is a way back machine and we can go back and we can look at what the Google results were and we do have somebody who pled guilty. And look, I mean, this is for every individual to make up their own mind. You can't Google for solicitation of prostitution involving a minor. I mean, that was literally a matter of public record. I can only speak for myself. That's not really somebody I would involve myself with, even at a professional level. Uh, and had you known?

David: but it wasn't widely publicized at the time.

Saagar: Palm Beach Post. There were numerous news articles.

David: I thought the Palm Beach story didn't come out until or sorry, maybe it was the Miami Herald didn't come out till 2018.

Saagar: Well, you're Yeah, you're talking about the 2018 kind of the broader story, but the original solicitation of prosecution involving a minor charge, 2007, I believe, is when the nonprosecution agreement came to bear. That was all public record in terms of registration of a sex offender. And again, you can use the way back machine and you can go back and look. I mean again this doesn't necessarily implicate anybody in a crime and anybody can make up the decision for themselves as to how they would have uh you know involved themselves with that person but it was it was out there like it wasn't uh unknown and I do think it's not really responsible to imply otherwise.

Michael Tracey: Quick factual clarification on that although it wasn't an enormous story at the time. You can find coverage in the New York Times in July of 2008 after Epstein pleaded guilty to the two state level prostitution charges. We didn't have the full scope of the information obviously about what he was accused of or the nature of the nonprosecution agreement, but a Google search would have yielded that at that time.

David: Yeah, it's hard for me to judge. I certainly in that time period had never even heard of Jeffrey Epstein and I don't think most people had. When did this become sort of a cause celeb? I mean, wasn't it more around his 2018? I would say

Michael Tracey: 2018. Yeah, I think it's important to explain and when the incredibly overrated Miami Herald series by Julie K. Brown, which is just r rife with errors and mischaracterizations became this sensation across the media landscape and Julie K. Brown was showered with all these accolades from all these bogus journalism industry organizations. Even though, for example, I caught her fabricating quotes in her book, Coversion of Justice, which was based on the initial Miami Herald series. But Michael, I don't think that you would clownish people in the journalism landscape. Michael, I don't think that you would deny that ultimately that this did not Yes, it was sparked by Julie K. Brown's Miami Herald story is that a federal judge was not necessarily like, you know, a federal judge who reviewed the nonprosecution agreement did say that this was a violation of the Crime Victim's Rights Act because

Michael Tracey: that was overturned on appeal.

Saagar: Right. Well, I understand, however, that this has also gone forth to the Supreme Court involving Gain Maxwell. As I understand now, is currently being litigated. But I do think it is important.

Michael Tracey: The Supreme Court rejected it. Yeah, that's what I'm what I'm talking about. Maxwell's appeal appeal.

Saagar: I'm talking about the Maxwell appeal, but specifically the nonprosecution agreement and the overturning is what re led to the current indictment of the 2019 indictment of Jeffrey Epste. No,

Michael Tracey: Yeah. I mean, this is a misconception. The nonprosecution agreement was never overturned. Gileain Maxwell's argument includes Let me just finish. Sure. Gileain Maxwell's argument in her appeals included citing the nonprosecution agreement as something that she claimed she ought to have been covered by. Yes. And therefore insulated from federal prosecution which was initiated against her in 2020. The nonprosecution agreement was never nullified. It was never voided. Bradley Edwards, the victim lawyer, attempted to convince federal judges to somehow nullify it, but he failed. The reason why Jeffrey Epstein was federally reprosecuted in 2019 is because prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, Moren Comey at all, concocted this cockamame rationale for how they could circumvent the nonprosecution agreement by picking claiming they found a new victim in New York, claiming that there was some interstate nexus in which they could tie some of the old Florida allegations, but it was never nullified at all.

David: All right, guys. Let me let me just get control of this again because I think we're going down a rabbit hole and there's lots of aspects of this story that that we could discuss. I think that we should probably judge each person who interacted with Epstein or visited his island and so forth and so on individually in terms of what they actually did, what they actually knew. Sar, I just think you're being a little bit unfair to Jason because all he did was exchange emails with

Saagar: Well, what I was trying to point out was Jeffrey Epstein's knowledge or interest of Bitcoin in 2011. And that links to a broader Epstein involvement with money laundering and tax fraud and so-called involvement with Leon Black and many of these other multi-billionaires who paid him lots of money. I'm just saying I'm putting that as part of into a broader scheme.

David: Yes. And I think that exchange was noteworthy for the reason you just said, which is that Epstein somehow was putting himself in the middle of all sorts of things. I mean, he's almost like a Zeligike figure who pops up in many different newsworthy stories over the last few decades, which is what I think makes this interesting. I think maybe a question for each of you is who do you think this guy ultimately was? I mean, you hear all sorts of theories. Let's say maybe the Epstein maximalist position would be that he was an intelligence asset or intelligence agent who was running a vast compromat operation on his island and thereby was corrupting and blackmailing the world's elite to someone who uh I think Michael you you have a different point of view on that. Let me not characterize it. I'll let you guys do it, but Sagar, let me start with you. Who do you think this guy was? And ultimately, you know, at a 30,000 ft level, what do you think is going on here? What is this Epstein story really about? And then Michael, I want to go to you on the same question.

Saagar: Yeah, sure. I mean, I do think that there is a very low IQ unfortunate, you know, explosion of accusations that are out there. And I want to be very responsible in the way that I describe it. I think that Jeffrey Epstein was somebody who arose under very suspicious conditions uh in the 1980s potentially involving Iran Contra knowledge specifically with arms traffickers like Adnan Kosigible and Douglas Lease Steven Hoffenberg as well and that these black market moneyaundering tax evasion strategies were honed over a period which eventually inspired various people like Lesie Wexner and many other multi-billionaires and that at the very same time he also had you know his sexual proclivities which I think at this point were wellknown and that those became and became useful his moneyaundering specific uh duties and knowledge and usefulness let's say to the CIA to various other intelligence assets became a very useful part of the nexus in the postcold war environment and that at the time it was also socially known for a lot of Epstein associates that he had this bizarre practice of often you know seeking out massages which In some cases, they are saying involving underage girls. And so to say that he was running a vast compromat operation, I think ascribes too much intention to what's really happening here. And the reason why I'm being intentional in my language is that what he clearly was doing was recruiting and running this like vast massage scheme also involving Gain Maxwell all across the world, Russian and Eastern European women, but also that this behavior was tolerated in some cases seen by a vast number of the global elite.

Michael Tracey: I will answer that. However, I do want to just stipulate upfront that I think this reflex to have to offer some kind of totalistic assessment of who Jeffrey Epstein was at, his very essence has fed into so much of the constant churn of algorithmic slop that has generated this hysterical frenzy around this issue and has led to people be totally deluded about what we're even talking about. What do most people I I I have some surmises about Jeffrey Epsteine. He definitely was a money manager who, as you mentioned, was sort of like this Zelig character who did have an extraordinary cross-section of connections with people from across fields. And, you know, I just was looking through some of these records in the new Epstein Files Productions, and I was looking for something else, but there are there's an archive of these old message pads that he had at his Palm Beach house and I'm scrolling through and it turns out Holly Berry left him a couple of messages. I had no idea that Holly Berry was ever in contact with Jeffrey Epstein. So you can always find somebody new and novel who apparently had a one dealing or another with him. But why are we talking about Jeffrey Epstein right now in February of 2026 because PE he is believed to have been the most prolific child sex trafficker in American or perhaps world history which is why this issue might now take down the British government. It's embroiling Norway. A minister in Slovakia had to resign over it. There's a new criminal investigation that was just launched in France, etc. That's what people conceive Jeffrey Epstein to have been. And that whole notion is based on just an onslaught of mythological nonsense that's pumped out daily by these YouTube shows, I won't mention names, podcasts, etc., social media personalities who are driven by these perverse algorithmic incentives to be totally divorced from the facts.

Michael Tracey: foreground this rampant speculation that ties in the Mossad, ties in unnamed other intelligence agencies with this presumed implication or this presumed uh reality that of course we know for sure that Jeffrey Epste was running this pedto crime ring and we all so they they presuppose a conclusion that's just been floating out there in the ether thanks to all this horrendous media coverage. I think this is the worst story of my adult lifetime in terms of the media coverage and it implicates the alternative media, the mainstream media and everybody in between. It's actually shocking. I will predict here and now that if we revisit this issue in I don't know two or three years, people will come to realize if I have anything to do with it that they were bamboozled on a mass scale. There's genuine fraud that has been rampant in ter the journalistic malfeasants. We're not supposed to ever consider the massive financial incentives where the Epstein industry is now something like I've estimated a billion dollars in terms of the payouts that have been given to purported victims who are allowed to just reimagine things that happened to them 20 years before as an adult, not as a child, but adult at the time of their claim victimization and then call themselves a sex trafficking victim and then they can secure a couple million dollars tax-free from JP Morgan and the media will hail them as these brave survivors without doing a single thing to check the veracity of any of their claims. You know why people are so upset about these redactions in the Epstein files? And I'm upset too. I criticized Thomas Massie and Roana for the language of their bill that they crafted, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which they crafted in concert with Bradley Edwards, this extortionist quote unquote victim's lawyer who's made a killing on this issue over the past 10 years in conjunction with David Boy, another shyer. and Bradley Edwards at his urging Roan and Thomas Massie put in this giant carveout to so-called transparency and disclosure into their bill such that the DOJ was authorized to redact or withhold or conceal any information that could be the most tangentially tied to anything that's quote victim identifying.

Saagar: Well, I do, Michael. I think we can at least agree that Cash Patel and Pam Bondi haven't uh handled this all that responsibly on that particular issue. Oh, oh, well, I mean, you're asking me to correct the record of something I've never even uttered. I've never said the word. It's literally not something that I've ever claimed. I mean, I do think, Michael, uh, that what you like to do is to go after, and really, I think fundamentally, I'm not even sure if you would reject this. You reject the idea of victimization, that post victimization, uh, can't even happen. And I also, I don't even necessarily want to get the idea of victimization. I don't even know what that means. Well, you reject the idea that women could be victimized, uh, let's say, by Jeffrey Epste, manipulated. Yes. in even if some cases money were exchanging hands. I will say, by the way, that just paying or flying in adult women from Eastern Europe to for the express purposes of having sex is a crime, by the way. Sure, it's not underage. However, we do have the 2007 draft indictment where there were a number of underage victims that were mentioned there where Epstein specifically asked a 15-year-old if he knows anybody who's younger uh that he could be able to recruited. And so, I do think your core contention that at the end of the day, he was a quote pedophile uh is definitely illegitimate.

David: All right, guys. Let me let me just get control of this again because I think we're going down a rabbit hole and there's lots of aspects of this story that that we could discuss. I think that we should probably judge each person who interacted with Epstein or visited his island and so forth and so on individually in terms of what they actually did, what they actually knew. Sar, I just think you're being a little bit unfair to Jason because all he did was exchange emails with ... listen let me ask you a couple other questions and then once leaves Michael we can get you to say what you want to say I want to go to the less waxner deposition the other day. What did we learn from that specifically about how Epstein got his start? I do think that there are these questions about again who this guy was, how did he accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars so early in his career? How did he seem to um obtain all these different uh connections specifically to the intelligence world? Did any of that get resolved? And what what's your take on that?

Saagar: No, David, it wasn't resolved. Unfortunately, the entire transcript is not public. What we do know from the House Oversight Committee, at least what's been released now so far is Leslie Wexner said he was never questioned ever once by the FBI or the Department of Justice involving this case. I will say if you look at the track record of Leslie Wexner, it's incredibly bizarre. He claims that Epstein was a con man who stole his money for decades. In 1991, we had the power of attorney that was signed over to him. He claims that Epstein was a financial genius and a wizard. We have the transferring of the town home which eventually there was some payment uh that was reconciled uh on the back end. But an incredible amount of control that Jeffrey Epstein had over Leslie Wexner's finances over the Wexner Foundation which he used to funnel money to Aud Barack the former prime minister of Israel support many Zionist causes under the Wexner Foundation including the Wexner Fellowship currently at Harvard University. I do think it's important for us to explore some more of that. There's some very odd dealings with the beginnings of their relationship.

David: Yeah. So, he he began his career, I guess, at Bear Sterns. I guess it was a brief stint where he worked I guess he one of the curious things about him is he dropped out of college around age 20. I guess he was studying math. He then was a teacher at the Dalton School for like a year, correct? And then he worked at Bear Sterns for four years.

Saagar: He met Ace Greenberg through the Dalton School. Greenberg's I think it was it was either one of his children uh was there and then he went to Bear Sterns. He's fired from Beer Sterns after a couple of years and that's when his descent into what I call like the darkness his expertise in moneyaundering. I believe that that's when it was honed as reflects in the record and the testimony of the people who dealt with him there at the time including the false passport Iran contour arm smuggling and all of that that I've laid out.

David: All right. So Michael let me kind of reset here. Okay. I'm I'm not sure you've had a chance to kind of lay out your case for what you called Epstein mythology. Yeah. So, I want to give you a chance to kind of just lay out your thesis here that what's happening is actually a type of moral panic or feeding frenzy, a type of hysteria. You've compared it to the Salem witch trials. Yeah. There was also the case in the 1980s of the whole day child abuse. Satanic panic. the satanic where I think hundreds of people went to jail or were prosecuted for that. It turned out I don't know if it was hundreds but more than enough to make it a extreme miscarriage of justice. So that's the comparison you've made.

Michael Tracey: In terms of the satanic panic parallel, that's not one that I would have necessarily been most inclined to bring up until recently just because there's now this new layer of the mythology that's added been added with the production of these Epstein quote files where people are reading snippets of emails to signify some kind of coded messaging around cannibalism or around grotesque child sacrifice. that really wasn't a hallmark of the Epstein story so much before this enormous tunch of emails were released. And it relates to the satanic panic frenzy in so far as claims around such things as like truly grotesque child sacrifice, mutilation of infants, you know, bathing toddlers in blood. Like all the most nightmarish scenarios you could possibly dream up were alleged in the 1980s and taken deadly seriously by the authorities resulting in as you alluded to a good number of people actually being thrown in prison for many years and it was turn it was found to be just a gigantic hoax. ... Virginia Roberts Giuffre was a profoundly disturbed mentally unwell person who was validated and legitimized and now continues to be celebrated as some kind of martyr for truth. ... Maria Farmer is one of these other definitely mentally ill persons who, for example, introduced or was integral in introducing this idea that Epstein had cameras set up in all his bedrooms and bathrooms and was surreptitiously recording prominent people so he could use it for blackmail.

David: Let me put a pin in that cuz I want to let Kevin Bass get in here. I've been following your feed quite a bit. You are basically a startup entrepreneur who got interested in in the Epstein files. I think you used AI to analyze them. And in particular, you've been looking at Reed Hoffman's story about Epstein, and you've put together an analysis. I think you've called it the Reed Hoffman Files. ... Maybe a place to start is with Reed Hoffman's statement in 2019 to Axios. ... Reed's statement at that time was the following: "My few interactions with Jeffrey Epstein came at the request of Joey Itto for the purposes of fundraising for the MIT Media Lab. ... My last interaction with Epste was in 2015." Is that statement accurate?

Kevin Bass: Not at all. Uh, and in fact, it's not just from 2019. Uh, he even reiterated this on February 4th this year on X repeatedly. ... Like, none of that's uh at all true. Uh there's very few mentions of even fundraising with MIT. I would even go so far as to say I don't know. I I've said it this way on on some of my posts, but it's like the extent of the relationship between Epstein and Reed Hoffman, it almost looks like best friends. ... there are constant contact uh there's something around on the order of about 400 initiations by Hoffman to Epstein. It wasn't just mediated by Joe Eito at all. And uh you know there's their their sec their assistants were in constant contact with each other. They had extensive financial relationships. There's something like 42 different meetings uh that are documented. Around 20 are absolutely confirmed. Uh they met in in person for breakfast. They would uh spend each other spend each other spend time with each other's at each other's houses overnight meet um you know Epstein met his wife. It is claimed that by Hoffman that he only was there for one night. Even the one time that we have absolutely document that documented that uh he's referring to he was there for two nights and almost certainly there was two other island visits as well in addition.

David: Well, and but here's the question is why did Reed so brazenly lie about his relationship with Epstein? ... my theory on this, I think it's kind of obvious what he's doing, is that by pointing the finger at Trump or Elon, actually both, he's driving everyone into their partisan tribes, right? So, as to, I think, seek protection of the Democrat tribe to which he's contributed hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think it's worked. I mean, you look at the mainstream media coverage of this, the New York Times coverage of it... They wrote an article about Epstein's ties to Silicon Valley. Other people who had far less extensive of a relationship with Epstein got paragraphs in that story. Reed Hoffman was only mentioned in one sentence along with three other people. So, he does seem to be getting a pass from the media.

Michael Tracey: Yeah. And I mean, that just goes to show how weaponizable this whole thing is and how the Epstein story or any kind of tangential connection to Epstein can be leveraged to serve some kind of pre-existing agenda. So, if like Reed Hoffman and Elon Musk don't like each other, then they could accuse each other of like having a more a closer connection to Epstein than they did. And it's just like a uh a slugfest. And yet, I'm still struggling to understand like what the underlying accusation of wrongdoing is supposed to be.

David: Well look I think both of you have performed very valuable services for the public in regards to this whole episode. ... I'm keeping an open mind with respect to what comes out next. It would not surprise me at all if Michael Tracy turned out to be correct but also it wouldn't completely surprise me if some version of Sagar's uh version of the story proved to be correct assuming more evidence comes out. So I'm keeping an open mind.

Michael Tracey: I try to be rigorously evidence-based as well myself. So, I don't discount the idea that something could theoretically come out that would undermine some of the assumptions or conclusions that I've derived from my, you know, research and reporting on this. So I think that's a healthy epistemological habit to always be open to the possibility of something that's contra in contravention of your prior assumptions uh being presented to you.

David: Absolutely. Fully agreed. Okay, we'll leave it there. Thanks, guys.